Jerry Douglas Don't Mess Around

Mr. Flux, purely tearin' it up.

Sanders: Keep Gesturing

All that pictures and words can do is gesture beyond themselves toward the fleeting glory that stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing.

--Scott Russell Sanders, "Beauty" 

Maureen Ash: Church Basement

Ted Kooser is not only a great poet, he is also a great judge of poetry. This is one of the finest poems I've read in a while. Copied with permission from ALiP.
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Welcome to American Life in Poetry. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 424

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

It’s a difficult task to accurately imagine one’s self back into childhood. Maybe we can get the physical details right, but it’s very hard to recapture the innocence and wonder. Maureen Ash, who lives in Wisconsin, gets it right in this poem.




Church Basement

The church knelt heavy

above us as we attended Sunday School,

circled by age group and hunkered

on little wood folding chairs

where we gave our nickels, said

our verses, heard the stories, sang

the solid, swinging songs.

It could have been God above

in the pews, His restless love sifting

with dust from the joists. We little

seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting

to grow toward the light.

Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside,

an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp-

edged shadows back to their buildings, or

how the winter air knifed

after the dreamy basement.

Maybe the day we learned whatever

would have kept me believing

I was just watching light

poke from the high, small window

and tilt to the floor where I could make it

a gold strap on my shoe, wrap

my ankle, embrace

any part of me.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Maureen Ash. Reprinted by permission of Maureen Ash. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.

Marilynne Robinson: The Human Face

. . . now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. [My friend] Boughton and I have talked about that, too. It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it, but this is truest in the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any. Boughton agrees.

--Marilynne Robinson, from Gilead

Alone

Tonight at dVerse, our hostess, Victoria Slotto, invites us to write something with voice, passion--something about which we are motivated, inspired, excited, or outraged. This one is not really up to those standards, but it is about an event that held deep feeling for me at that time of my childhood. And I think it does ring with my voice, such as it is (that is, I think it's typical of the kind of stuff I usually write!). Come share with us!

Alone

That blazing afternoon

when I chased an ill-thrown ball

into the front yard, and saw

your shoes beside our car’s

open door, your upturned

purse, and you were nowhere,

and what can you expect

from a boy weaned on

Armageddon and the Imminent

Return of Almighty Christ?

In the twinkling of an eye,

we were told, and the blood

rushed to my hair-tips, and I looked

for you, would not be comforted.

And later, you came home and told us

how you saw little Randy

running across the street, careless,

and the black low-slung sports car

screeching, flinging him into the air,

and before he came tumbling down

you had dropped your purse, run out

of your shoes, and he would be

all right, just a few broken bones,

but I thought you were gone

to be with Jesus, one taken

and the other one left,

and never again have I felt

so alone.

More Backyard Fun

This is my third day off in a row--a rare event here recently, but it's been nice to reconnect with the family. Today is breezy and cloudy, and last night's light rain left behind a welcome coolness. I took the littlest munchkinette outside to talk to the flowers. We had a splendid time.

Backyard Fun

I was able to spend some time with the boys today, after they came home from school. We found this big skink, about 8"-9". This isn't the first one we've found, or the first one that I've blogged about--I guess the backyard is a welcoming skink habitat. Here's a pretty good shot.

I came in a little closer, trying not to scare it away.

A little closer still.

This guy's had a tough go of it--notice the scars on his head and back, and it looks like a fairly new tail. Moving in for the big-time closeup, and . . .

Yeah, he split pretty fast, made me jump. Up the tree he went. You can just make him out, center of the picture, left side of the trunk.

I saw a lot of other wildlife. Here's two of the boys, digging in the ground for bugs. They get that honestly, I suppose.